“Wild Tales” is a descriptive enough name for an edgy omnibus film, but its Spanish-language title, “Relatos salvajes,” could be more literally translated as “Savage Tales.” From the bitter script to the manic acting to the showy cinematography, this savagery is what stands out. If you’re into black comedy, this is like a tar pit.
One suspects director Damián Szifron has a specific rage against the machine of Argentine politics, but the film appeals to haters of bureaucracy everywhere. The six shorts that comprise the whole are not connected by narrative, but by their viciousness and certain recurring images: shattered glass, exploding fireballs, inappropriately-deployed fire extinguishers.
The pre-credits short, about a group of airline passengers who realize they all have a common enemy just as the plane begins to veer off course, is deliciously pithy.
The next four segments are longer, more schematic and easily ironic: a celebration of a poisonous short-order cook who prefers prison life and finds her way back in; a road rage battle royale like a hard-R version of Jonathan Winters’ gas station brawl in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”; a tale of a man who’s ready to blow his stack over a series of parking tickets; and a flat melodrama of police duplicity that should have been cut.
But it’s worth sticking around for the final short. Two newlyweds arrive at their reception and, after a revelation of betrayal, engage in some of the most ill-advised post-nuptial behavior since Kirsten Dunst’s misadventures in a sand trap in “Melancholia.”
With a spinning camera, nauseating pop hits and the hilarious willingness of DJs, photographers, parents and bridesmaids to keep the jig up at any cost, the lunacy continues until the music stops. The mood pushes so far past the absurd that it reaches a tenderness.
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“Wild Tales” is showing at the Sebastiani Theatre. Rated R and running time is 2:02. Visit sebastianitheatre.com.
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